Confession is Good for the Soul
by prairiecrow
Summary: KR2000 AU (Shawn/KITT, KITT/Asexual OMC): For over a year, Brad Adair has been keeping a secret. Now that he's facing death he's inclined to share it — but the road to this point has been a convoluted one indeed.
1. Chapter 1

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

_So this is it,_ Brad Adair thought, staring up at the shuddering purple sky of Virtual Reality with a gaze already starting to glaze over: _I'm going to die. Here. Now. Without even a chance to say goodbye…_

The Shrike virus had hit him like a Mac truck, crashing through his avatar and into the RSI chip that enabled his VR manifestation, and from there into his brain where his body lay on a VR couch in the Knight Foundation's Seattle compound. He couldn't feel his flesh and blood in VR's dreamlike thrall, but he was pretty sure that it had stopped his breathing, and quite possibly his heart as well.

_Only seconds left, then._ His RSI chip began to count them dispassionately down. He didn't want it to end like this — but he'd chosen this death to save KITT from the same fate, and every piece of him, from balls to bones, was completely fine with that.

Speaking of… a slender arm clad in gleaming red, humming with far more latent power than any human avatar, slipped under his shoulders and half-lifted him from the cold cracked pavement onto which he'd been thrown. Somewhere nearby he could hear Shawn yelling for Joan to pull them the hell out, but he only half-heard what she was saying: all his attention was devoted to the face leaning over him, sculpted as if from flawless snow under its sleek spikes of short ebony hair, its thin lips a proud line of pale emerald whose contours Brad had personally sculpted.

_He saw what I did._ Brad had to smile ruefully at that. _But he doesn't know —_

_"Why?"_ KITT demanded. He was down on one knee, his back turned to the incoming second wave of Shrike incursions, completely focussed on Brad's destabilizing format. It was only one word, but they knew each other well enough after almost thirteen months of close professional association and late-night friendly debates that it conveyed a weight of dismay, outrage, and fear far out of proportion to its size. Somewhere in the line of battle his simulation of wrap-around mirrored black glasses had been torn off, and his eyes — sclera of obsidian, irises of backlit ruby, pupils of darkest night — were fixed on Brad's face, demanding answers to the end.

And what, really, did he have now to lose? At least he could be remembered for what was real. At least at the end, he could permit himself the luxury of the truth.

Each word cost a significant portion of his remaining energy. "Listen, KITT… I had to do it…"

Even with only seconds left, the secret he had so carefully hidden for so long refused to yield itself up so easily.

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, June 14__th__ 2002, 9:23 a.m._

Russell Maddock, who'd been taking them both deeper into the Compound's inner workings than Brad, R&D programmer though he'd formerly been, had ever gone before, shook his head and grimaced. "You haven't actually _met _him yet. Believe me, that might be more than enough to change your mind."

Brad grinned. "Mister Maddock, after seeing those programming schematics he'd have to be the Devil incarnate to make me say 'no' to this project. A Gestalt like that comes along once in a lifetime, if ever."

"Be careful what you wish for…" the CEO muttered, and swiped his keycard over the third set of pass-protected doors they'd encountered thus far.

As the doors opened, Brad became aware of sounds from the end of the long hallway they were just entering: beyond a pair of swinging doors voices were clearly being raised, and not in joyful melody either. It sounded like a savage argument was taking place, and as they strode briskly up the hall — Maddock now leading the way with a speed that suggested he felt he really should be intervening in the shouting match — Brad could make out specific words.

First, an English accent, male: "… got to be crazy! That's it— you're completely off your nut! If I had a sonic screwdriver and a big enough sledge hammer, by God I'd —"

Then a German accent, female: "For God's sake, calm down, both of you! Mister Maddock will be here any —"

And then an East Coast accent, unmistakably male, ridiculously Bostonian and over-the-top snide: _"Excuse me, but my 'nut' is bigger than all of yours combined — and if you so much as lay a hand on my paint job I'll shut this whole thing down faster than a —"_

English, furiously aggrieved: "Just _take the damned code_, you miserable, jacked-up excuse for a —"

Maddock put on a sprint and burst through the doors, with Brad jogging close behind. The sight that greeted their eyes could have been a painting by Jean Joseph Weerts: three people in lab coats, two men and one woman, grouped around the long and brilliantly scarlet form of the Knight Industries Four Thousand in various attitudes of fury, appeal, and cross-armed skepticism. The man with the English accent, who was pretty in an almost feminine way and looked like he was about to start tearing out his curly blond hair out in clumps, finished his sentence savagely: "— cracked-out scrap-heap _bastard!"_

_"Oh yes,"_ the car retorted sardonically, _"if reasoned appeals won't influence me, insults will certainly be much more likely to —"_

"What," Maddock cried, "the _hell_ is going on here?"

The Englishman spun on his heel to face Maddock, pointing a shaking forefinger at the car and spitting: "This… thing… is refusing to permit access to its CPU for a regularly scheduled maintenance code installation! Are you in the habit of letting your computers dictate when they can be serviced?"

_"He is when that computer is me,"_ the car announced haughtily, which earned him a glare from both the Englishman and from Maddock. _"And with all due respect — namely, none whatsoever — you're not one quarter the programmer Jaina was on her worst day. You've missed several holes in the code that she no doubt meant to amend before applying it to my process matrix."_

"Well, Ms. Sawarsa is dead," the Englishman ground out between clenched teeth, "and I am now in charge of your —"

Brad held up his hand. "Actually, you're not." He caught the woman's eye and nodded toward a computer station in front of the car's pointed nose where code in the Knight Industries proprietary language was frozen mid-segment. "May I…?"

She nodded, looking relieved at his interruption, and he hastened over to the station, dropping into the ergonomic chair in front of it. "Is this the code you're referring to?"

_"Yes,"_ both man and machine responded. As Brad began to scroll rapidly through the field of characters, his chip-enhanced brain processing it at greater than human maximum speed, the Englishman continued: "But it can't be trusted to read the label on a soup can, much less code of that sophistication. I went over those segments last night, and everything looks perfectly —"

"Actually," Brad interjected again, frowning fractionally at the screen, "he's absolutely right."

After a small but significant pause the Englishman asked, too politely: "I beg your pardon?"

Brad pushed his chair back and to one side, to permit an unimpeded view of what he was pointing at on the monitor. "Here, here, here — and here — there are sequence disconnects. They're very subtle, but definitely there. I'm no expert on this robot's systems — yet — but I'd guess that if you tried to install that into his sensor transducer matrix, which is where it looks like it's meant to fit, you'd crash at least 36% of his sensor net and propagate process tachs through every related system. It wouldn't cripple him in the long term, but it would be sheer hell to uninstall and clean up from afterwards."

_"Well, Maddock,"_ the car remarked in the silence that followed this pronouncement, _"it's nice to see that you've finally managed to find someone competent to oversee my care and maintenance. Would you prefer a bunch of red roses or a box of chocolates to celebrate your unprecedented success?"_

Maddock spared only a narrow glance for the vehicle before nodding to the Englishman. "Mister Carlyle, would you join me in the hallway for a moment…?"

They departed, Maddock stiff-shouldered, Carlyle visibly fuming, leaving Brad behind with the two as-yet-unknown programmers and the car they were dedicated to servicing, which complimented him dryly: _"Nicely done, Mister…?"_

Brad rose from the chair and turned his full attention to the robot, smiling in spite of the tension that lingered in the room because a sense of alignment, of connection, had suddenly clicked into place with that slight change of tone. "Bradley Conner Adair. Mister Maddock has just approved me as your new Senior Programming Technician."

The AI's voice fell to a less confrontational register, and immediately became… not more attractive, because even in defiance it was extremely appealing, but certainly silkier. _"Well, I must say it's a genuine pleasure to meet you, Mister Adair —"_

"Please, call me Brad." Oh yes, he could definitely get used to that accent: something about it, and the general timbre of that artificial voice, did very pleasant things to his nervous system. "And I may call you…?"

_"The Knight Industries Two Thousand. My close associates, however, call me KITT."_ He sounded overtly pleased now, and Brad was surprised, and a touch alarmed, to feel a lightening in his heart, a banishing of life-long tension that he hadn't realized was there until this machine's gratification had relieved it. _"And I do believe this is going to be the start of a long and _**_very_**_satisfying relationship…"_


	2. Chapter 2

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

KITT shook his head, his alien eyes afire with fierce denial. He'd always taken the injury and death of human beings he didn't know with a fair amount of equanimity: they were, after all, such fragile creatures, so easily damaged in comparison to his own adamant constitution. But those he cared about and those he trusted…

Brad spared a flicker of memory for Jaina Sawarsa, who he'd never met, but whom KITT had spoken of with such affection and admiration for months after her death. Molecular bonded shell or no, there were places deep inside KITT that could be touched if one was fortunate enough to be deemed worthy of the privilege.

_I've managed that much, at least._ A small consolation, and a bitter one, but he held it close to his heart and opened all his inner shields. There was no time left for cowardice. He was only going to die once, after all, and he'd only get one shot at this.

"Listen to me!" He held KITT's gaze with the full intensity of his pain, his exultation, his guilt, and his regret. "I love you… I always have…"

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, June 14__th__ 2002, 7:48 p.m._

Analyzing the ranks of code, marvelling at their mathematical poetry, Brad experienced an epiphany of intellectual admiration:_Dear God, I'm in love._

The rest of the Team (now all properly introduced, including the still-prickly but willing-to-play-ball Thomas Carlyle) had gone home over two hours ago, but Brad had remained, gazing at a rank of monitors in rapt fascination as KITT talked him through his own core architecture. He'd only been permitted to see global programming schematics while being considered for the Senior Programming Technican post: that taste of the Gestalt had been enough to drive him to compete for the job ferociously and to win over three other candidates, including two with post-doctoral DCompSci degrees from the most prestigious universities in North America. And now…

KITT was more than he could have possibly imagined, and Brad prided himself on possessing an imagination of exceptional scope and depth. The programming syntax ran the gamut from the relatively primitive coding of the 1980s, legacies of KITT's original foundation code, to apex sequences of such lyrical efficiency and pragmatic beauty —

"You say these are _self-generated?_"

_"Completely."_ The emotional emulation on this AI was second to none: thus far Brad had seen him express anger, aggression, sarcasm, satisfaction at the overthrow of an opponent, curiosity, pleasure, a critical species of friendliness, a biting sense of humour — and no small quantity of pride, which in Brad's opinion was thoroughly justified.

"My God." He tapped to scroll on all screens, processing the blur of symbols effortlessly. "I haven't seen generative complexity this fertile since…"

_"Since your own work on the Norwich Cuckoo?"_ Now he could add "sly" to the list of personality traits as well.

Brad couldn't help but chuckle, still admiring the code, which was as gorgeous and complex as the inner furls of innumerable roses of pure arithmetic. "Now, how did you find out about that? Did Maddock tell you?"

_"Let's just say that the encoding of the A3 Classified files on the Knight Foundation's database isn't quite as secure as he likes to believe."_

That caught his attention, enough that he paused the data flow and looked past the monitors toward the car. "You've hacked the servers?"

_"I'd hardly call it 'hacking',"_ KITT sniffed virtuously, _"considering that technically I _**_am_**_ part of the System network."_

"And Mister Maddock would see it that way, would he?"

_"He hasn't asked, and I'm not inclined to illuminate him."_ A significant beat, followed by a challenge: _"Are you?"_

Brad's heart did a slow but game-changing flip in his chest. He'd long ago come to terms with his asexuality and had experienced a vague romantic attraction to only two men in his entire adult life — never enough to do anything about it, quite apart from the fact that they might have demanded physical intimacies from him that he wasn't willing to provide — but sardonic, audacious, emotionally passionate and highly intelligent had always been his "type", insofar as he had one at all, and the past ten hours had been one long process of recognition, personal quality after personal quality falling into one unified package so harmonious that it sang like Handel's _Messiah_… or perhaps more accurately, like Ravel's _Bolero_, a seemingly simple progression gradually mounting to a soul-shaking crescendo of tension.

Staring at KITT's sleek physical shell, aware now of the elegance of both the AI's more subliminal substance and that unquantifiable quality that could only be called "spirit", Brad felt his foundations, which had been subtly shifting all day, fully turn beneath him and settle into a new, thrilling, terrifying configuration.

_Dear God,_ he thought again, with an entirely different quality of epiphany:_ I _**_am_**_ in love._ And hard on its heels came the much darker realization: _And nobody can ever know — especially not him. _

What he said aloud was, "Don't worry, KITT. Your secret is safe with me."

* * *

_The Here Kitty Kitty Club, Seattle, Washington, USA, July 25__th__ 2002, 6:47 p.m._

Five weeks passed. Brad waited. His homoromantic attachments had, in the past, always been brief: all it took was a little consideration of what the subjects of his longings would say if he told them he was attracted to them but didn't want a fully sexual relationship, and good ol' common sense had taken care of the rest.

This attachment did not fade. Entirely the opposite, in fact: every word he exchanged with KITT seemed to strengthen it exponentially. It didn't help that the AI seemed to have warmed to him in turn, and that they sent many evenings engaged in long intricate debates (and sometimes outright arguments) concerning a wider range of topics than Brad had ever found anybody else capable of holding his own on. By late June he was in a perfect misery of longing that the keen awareness of sheer impossibility did nothing to alleviate, and all he could do was grit his teeth and ride that part of their growing relationship out in silence.

So here he was at Here Kitty Kitty, alone, drowning his sorrows in a thoroughly traditional pint of beer. The bar was nearly empty this early in the evening, and a piercing squeal of delight carried easily over the music from the nearby dance floor: "Sooooo — what's this I hear about the Ice Queen finally falling from his ivory tower?"

Brad, who had been idly watching the two male couples on the floor and admiring the expensive cut of the clothes one one fellow in particular, glanced over his shoulder and winced. "Well hello there, Paulie — and I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Paulie Mitchell, who was dressed in an appalling combination of salmon pink polo shirt, skinny white jeans and an olive green baseball cap with the words "Big Mac Daddy" gold-stitched on the front, clocked across the geometrically patterned carpet and slid onto his habitual barstool beside Brad's, grinning like an overgrown leprechaun under his unruly shock of auburn hair. He and Brad went back about two years, when Brad had moved to San Antonio to start his work in the Knight Foundation's R&D Division and had discovered Here Kitty Kitty, which he appreciated for its low-key atmosphere, its generally aesthetically pleasing clientele, its congenial snooker tables and its $2 Lager Thursdays. It was, of course, the lager that had brought him here tonight — not that it looked like he was going to be able to enjoy it in peace.

For example, Paulie was slapping him companionably on the shoulder, still grinning. "C'mon, Adair m'dear — you've got 'the look of love' written all over you! And here I thought you were totally immune!" He wagged his other forefinger under Brad's nose. "Very naughty of you, trying to keep secrets."

"Look, Paulie…" It had taken him the better part of two weeks after he started attending the bar regularly to convince this man that no, really, while he might be "as cute as a mocha button with chocolate sprinkles on top" he genuinely wasn't interested in hooking up with anybody, including a certain highly sexed Irish expat — but he was just opening his mouth to remind Paulie that he wasn't into "the couples thing" at all when the penny dropped. His eyes went wide, then narrowed dangerously and darted to the bartender, who had seen Paulie come in and was pouring him his usual glass of scotch. "Oh hell… she told you, didn't she? That miserable — I'm going to _kill_ her, I swear to God!"

Paulie laughed good-naturedly and clapped him on the back again. "Now now Bradley, don't take it so hard!" Sheila, the big-mouthed bartender, came by to deposit a coaster and the glass of scotch in front of him, give the bar a quick wipe and Brad a cheeky smile, and sail away again. "Y'should know better than to tell Sheila anything, shouldn't you? She's just happy for you — as are we all." He took a nip of spirits and withdrew his arm to rest both elbows on the bar's brass railing. "It's not good for a man to be alone, as the Good Book says, and you've been dodging Cupid for too damned long."

Brad levelled a final glare at him and turned pointedly back to his beer. "Fuck off, Paulie."

"So, when are we going to meet the lucky…?" He leaned closer and raised both eyebrows in a tacit prompt.

"You're not," Brad muttered savagely.

"C'mon, at least tell me if it's a guy or a girl!" And then, when Brad looked at him like he'd just grown an extra head: "Guy, I'm guessing, since you don't get that _Oh my God don't touch me!_ look half as bad when a boy makes a pass at you."

"Fuck off, I said."

"So, what's he like? Tall? Short? White? Black? Polka-dotted? Green with red —"

"Jesus, you just don't know when to quit, do you?"

"Your mouth says _No_, but your eyes say _Yes, Paulie, I want to tell you aaaaalllll about him!_"

Brad studied him for a long moment. Sighed. "Will you shut the hell up about it if I do?"

Paulie crossed his heart. "Scout's honor, mate."

Brad glanced away toward the dance floor, where three male couples were now slow-dancing to the tune of "If You're Not The One", and sucked in a slow deep breath. _Where the hell do I start?_ He opened his mouth, for once not sure exactly what was going to come out, and heard himself say: "He's… absolutely amazing. I mean, he's got it all: he's witty, he's cultured, he has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, he's devastatingly intelligent — and he has a perspective on life, the universe and everything that's absolutely unique. We never run out of things to talk about, and every time I think I've got him figured out, he winds up surprising me."

Paulie's face fell almost comically. "Uh oh," he said.

Brad looked at him in perplexity. "What?"

"You didn't mention anything about how he looks. Always a bad sign. Don't tell me: he's seventy-eight years old, or he's a quadruple amputee — or, just a plain ol' dog."

That provoked a laugh in spite of Brad's determination to remain in a foul mood. "He's got the best body I've ever seen," he said with a smirk, and it was, really, nothing less than the truth depending on your frame of reference. "And he's one of those guys it's really hard to pin an exact age on, if you absolutely must know."

Paulie grinned from ear to ear. "You'll have to bring him by so we can judge that for ourselves, won't you?"

Brad shook his head decisively and picked up his beer again. "Ain't gonna happen."

Paulie watched him take a swallow. "You — why not?" Then his mouth fell open. "Oh God, he has no clue, does he!"

"Paulie… I work with him, and I don't feel like committing career suicide."

"So?" He waggled his eyebrows. "Nothing like a little supply-closet romance, am I right?"

The image of KITT trying to cram himself into a supply closet almost made Brad snort beer out his nose, but he quickly sobered. "And he's… kind of seeing someone already."

"Define 'kind of'."

He thought about the complex relationship that Shawn and KITT shared, tried to reduce it to a set of brief sentences, and utterly failed. "She's crazy about him, and he's completely devoted to her."

The shorter man's round face fell again. "So, he's straight."

"Let's just say he's not the kind of guy who falls into that neat a category there, either," Brad said, and promptly gave himself an award for the Biggest Understatement of His Life.

And brightened. "So you _do_ have a chance!"

"Yeah," Brad grimaced, and finished his beer in two swallows. It was far less bitter than the ache around his heart. "In the same universe where fish ride bicycles and pigs fly."


	3. Chapter 3

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

KITT's virtual eyes widened, his finely drawn ebony eyebrows elevating alarmingly.

Brad waited for the AI to process his statement. It wouldn't take long. He only hoped he had enough time left for an appropriate response, if —

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, November 22__nd__ 2002, 6:07 p.m._

He hadn't gotten a metre inside the doors of the lab before KITT, who had all the inherent tact of Joan Rivers at a red carpet event, performed a standard acquisition scan and immediately demanded: _"What the hell happened to _**_you?_**_"_

Brad winced, which made his left eye socket hurt even more, so he grimaced, which only made things even worse. Everybody else he'd run into so far today had possessed the common courtesy to pretend that they couldn't see the black eye under the skin-tone makeup he'd applied before leaving his apartment this morning, but KITT, naturally, felt bound by no such human conventions — either that or he really _did_ have absolutely no filter between his processor and his voice modulator when it came to asking awkward questions. Brad had never quite decided which, but Shawn had always maintained that he just enjoyed making people squirm.

Fortunately there were no other personnel present, for which mercy Brad was profoundly grateful. "I fell down a flight of stairs," he informed KITT lightly, heading for the master workstation and refusing to look at the car in hopes (likely vain) that the avoidance gesture would clue KITT in. "Into a door handle. In the dark. Now what's this Shawn was saying about some process flow —"

_"Ha ha," _KITT countered, clearly anything but amused. _"Very droll. Positively hilarious. Now are you going to tell me why you look like one half of a raccoon, or shall we play a round of Twenty Questions?"_

He set down his coffee cup, took his seat and focussed all his attention on calling up a diagnostic grid. "Process flow tachs. I see you haven't uploaded an incident report ye—"

_"Starting with, Was he bigger than a bread box? Because he was certainly bigger than your average doorknob, from the look of things."_

Maybe Shawn had a point after all — and Brad, based on past performance, was pretty damned sure that if he didn't tell KITT what he wanted to know the AI would not only refuse to cooperate with the process flow tach diagnostic, he'd probably lock down his CPU and sulk. So Brad closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, counted to ten, and opened them again to stare up at the white-tiled ceiling.

"Yeah, he was. About two hundred and thirty-five pounds and six feet six inches bigger."

A beat of expectant silence. Brad dared to pray that KITT would be content with that much information, but — _"And?"_

He took a deep breath, trying to calm his suddenly higher heart rate, knowing full well that KITT wouldn't have missed it — and that if he tried to fudge the truth about what had happened, the car's sensors would pick up the physical tell-tales. "Not much more to tell, really. I ran into him at a rave last night, he took exception to something I said — and he ploughed me one."

In his chip-enhanced memory, meanwhile, the entire brief exchange was playing back in perfect high fidelity, from the moment Mister Beefcake had slid up behind him at the bar:

_"So, pretty boy — I hear you don't play."_

_It wasn't an unexpected question: he'd been attending raves regularly at this location since coming to San Antonio, and it was pretty well known by now that he wasn't open to sexual propositions of any kind. "Nope," he'd said curtly, barely granting Beefcake a scornful fleeting glance, hoping that his icy body language would send a clear and daunting message._

_But a huge hand had closed on his upper arm, spinning him around to face a man who towered over him by a good five inches and who looked high as hell on something or other. "You'll play for _**_me_**_," Beefcake had smirked, and Brad was suddenly aware of at least two of Beefy's friends grinning in the near background, and of the crowd around them starting to pull away as herd awareness kicked in that something was about to go down._

_Given the choice to cower or challenge, Brad had always been a big believer in the principle that the best defence was a good offence — and besides, who the hell did this asshole think he _**_was_**_, anyway? "No fucking way," he had hissed, trying not to blink or to shake with adrenaline as he glared into those pupil-blown blue eyes. "And even if I did, it sure as hell wouldn't be with a brain-dead, ham-fisted, steroid-infused pencil-dick like _**_you._**_"_

_One-point-five seconds later he'd been on the floor, seeing stars, and three other rave regulars had been holding Beefcake back from pounding him into the —_

KITT was speaking sternly: _"I trust you reported this to the proper authorities?"_

Brad shook his head decisively. Time for another session of Social Education For Sentient Cars. "Listen, Big Guy… what happens at a rave, stays at a rave. Besides, it's just a black eye — no big deal, a week to ten days and it's gone."

KITT lacked the ability to breathe, but Brad thought he could hear the equivalent to a slow inhalation, eloquent of patience being severely tested._ "All right then... What exactly did you say to set him off? I know you're capable of being quite the smart-ass, but —"_

_Oh, if that's not the pot calling the kettle black,_ Brad thought bitterly, and laced his fingers behind his head so he didn't start fidgeting. "Look, can we just drop it?"

_"Not when it involves a case of assault and battery,"_ KITT hectored. _"On _**_my_**_ senior programmer, no less!"_

"Who probably deserved everything he got."

_"Nobody deserves to be physically attacked for an opinion honestly expressed."_

He grinned mirthlessly. "Even after I called him a brain-dead, ham-fisted, steroid-infused pencil-dick?"

_"Well, was he?"_

If Brad had been drinking coffee at that moment he would have spewed half of it all over his keyboard. _"KITT!"_ he cried, sitting up straight in his chair and dropping his arms to stare at the vehicle in dismay — but he had to admit, he'd almost laughed too.

_"I'll take that as a 'yes'. And you still haven't told me what he said to set __**you**__ off."_

"Who says he said anything?"

_"Brad,"_ KITT said patiently, _"you may be a smart-ass, but I've never known you to attack someone outright unless you were returning fire. Therefore the 'gentleman' in question must have offended you in some way."_

"He didn't offend me," Brad protested, trying desperately to think of a graceful way out of this line of questioning without letting anything incriminating slip — but his 148 IQ seemed to have temporarily deserted him. "He — well… he propositioned me."

KITT processed that for a second. _"Sexually?"_

"No, he wanted a fourth for bridge. Yes, sexually!"

_"There's no need to be sarcastic."_

"There is when you start prying into my —" He couldn't restrain a bitter choke of laughter. "— love life."

Instantly he knew he'd misstepped, and badly. Surely KITT would pounce on such a glaringly obvious conversational anomaly, implying as it did profound dissatisfaction with said aspect of Brad's existence — but KITT swerved onto a different heading. _"I take it he wasn't physically attractive."_

"I'm not sure," Brad admitted quite honestly. "To some people, probably. He was big and well-built, with muscles for miles."

_"Which you don't find personally appealing?"_

"Not particularly." Now _that_ was hedging, and KITT homed in on it like a heat-seeking missile.

_"Then what _**_do_**_ you find appealing?"_

"Asks the person who wouldn't know sexual attractiveness if it walked up and sat in his drivers seat," Brad quipped uneasily.

_"Would _**_you?_**_"_

Brad could feel the blood drain out of his face. For a couple of seconds his mouth simply hung open in shocked silence. "The… what the hell kind of question is _that?_"

_"A perfectly reasonable one, given the data,"_ KITT stated cooly. _"In the past one hundred and sixty-two days since joining the KIFT Project, during eight-nine of which I have been present to conduct regular scans, you have exhibited no physical reactions consistent with sexual arousal towards any of your co-workers, nor towards any of the twenty-three visitors to the lab during that time period. Your co-workers, on the other hand, have averaged three point two such responses per day over that period of time — a high incidence in a professional environment, largely in consequence of Betty Ganges and Thomas Carlyle, who have been conducting a rather torrid affair for the past forty-eight days."_

"You — they — _what?_"

_"The logical conclusion," _KITT continued, _"is that you have an exceptionally low or completely non-existent sexual drive, although of course since I haven't been able to monitor you during your off-duty hours, the possibility exists that —"_

"I'm asexual." The words choked out in a rush. Anything to shut the bloody car up!

_"Is that a statement, or are you just finishing my sentence?"_

Of course it wasn't going to be that easy. "It's a statement. Your conclusion is correct." He drew a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart, consciously loosening his death-grip on the arms of his chair. "I. Am. Asexual."

After a pause for what was clearly an Internet search, KITT said, _"Ah. I see. According to the Kinsey Report, 1.5% of the adult male population in his sample identified as X, which was a category for those with no socio-sexual contacts or reactions."_

Brad nodded. "What's now called asexuality, yes."

_"And you believe yourself to be part of that sub-set?"_

His discomfort was largely overwritten by a rush of irritation, some of it with the quality of very old resentment indeed. "I don't 'believe' anything, KITT, any more than Shawn 'believes' she's heterosexual or Rudy 'believes' he's attracted to his wife. Sexual orientation is inbuilt — and my orientation is non-sexual."

_"Completely?"_ He sounded deeply interested. Of course: to KITT, who in spite of his conspicuously passionate nature lacked all sexual drive, the subject of human mating and the rituals surrounding it was endlessly puzzling and fascinating.

Brad drew a slow breath, wishing he'd nipped this conversation in the bud — but once KITT got his figurative teeth into something he hung on like grim death, and short of getting up and leaving the lab Brad would have to ride this out to the end. Best to be as forthright as possible, then. "Not completely, no. I… do enjoy the occasional session of masturbation, and I'm capable of attraction to other men in a romantic and emotional way, just not in a sexual way."

_"Never?"_

"Not to anyone I've yet encountered, no."

_"Your heart rate has just increased by 10.2% and your pupils have dilated by 25.6%," _KITT observed._ "I'm very sorry if I've upset you — only I've never met a human being who claimed a complete, or near-complete, lack of sexual drive. I'd always considered it an inherent condition of the human animal."_

Brad laughed low in his throat. "Oh, it is — except for the very few of us who aren't quite whole in that respect."

_"Is 'whole' really the most accurate term? In this context it sounds rather… pejorative."_

"To 98.5% of the human species, sexual desire is an appetite as fundamental as the need to eat, sleep or breathe," Brad pointed out, trying to maintain as clinical a tone as possible. "I'd say the absence of that motivator constitutes a conspicuous lack, wouldn't you?"

_"And that distresses you."_

He touched his left eye ruefully. "Let's just say that it sometimes leads to… sub-optimal outcomes."

_"I'm sorry," _KITT said softly, and he sounded like he meant it.

That made Brad blink. "For what?"

_"That it has led to your being harmed. You are —" _A tiny hesitation, but clearly audible._ "Your well-being is important to me, Brad. _**_Very_**_ important. I would do anything in my power to prevent you from being injured in the future."_

"You're —" It was a testament far greater than the mere words would suggest, given the AI's profound unwillingness to trust those around him, or to become attached to them, on general principle. "— a good friend, KITT. But really, it's no problem." He twisted his mouth wryly. "Or at least it's not a problem that I haven't learned how to handle."

_"It must have been difficult, being different from your fellow human beings in such a fundamental way." _Coming from anyone else, Brad would have written that off as a trite show of sympathy. Coming from KITT, who knew what being "different" meant in a truly unique fashion, it carried a lot more weight.

After a moment he nodded. "It took me a while to realize that everybody else was marching to a different drummer. When I did, I knew pretty much right away that I couldn't hear the same music. After that it was a matter of learning to recognize their motivations, even though I didn't share them myself, and to understand how it affected their reactions and their decisions."

_"So you don't understand love?"_

"Oh, no. I understand love pretty damned well." _Even if I'll never be able to tell the object of my affections about it in a million years… _"It's the drive to couple physically that's nearly entirely missing."

_"So," _KITT said thoughtfully,_ "your ideal partner would be someone who shared the desire for an emotional connection, but not for a sexual expression of that relationship?"_

"And an intellectual connection," Brad added, and wondered why he was torturing himself this way. "That's very important to me. But that pretty much covers it, yes."

_"Well, I'm afraid you're doomed to disappointment," _the AI sniffed. _"In my experience, human beings have a great deal of difficulty separating a certain depth of emotional attachment from the need to express that attraction physically."_

He rubbed the spot directly between his eyebrows, where a headache was rapidly forming, and winced. "Tell me about it… and KITT?"

_"Yes, Brad?"_

"Can we keep this conversation just between the two of us? I don't want even Shawn to know about my… situation."

_"Does it embarrass you?"_

"It would lead to all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Asexuals are… well, a lot of people look on us as freaks. I'd rather not be exposed to that kind of speculation."

_"Of course,"_ KITT replied crisply._"Your secret is safe with me."_

Brad bit his lower lip and managed to refrain from informing the AI that he didn't know the half of it — or the worst of it, by a long shot. "Thank you. I appreciate it. Now please, upload that incident report and I'll see what I can do about those tachs you picked up on the last mission…"

And KITT, mercifully, finally let the matter drop and did as he was asked.


	4. Chapter 4

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

The expression on KITT's face, at first blankly uncomprehending, was rapidly resolving itself into dawning horror and amazement. _"You…? No, that's…."_

Brad didn't blame him. It was some additional comfort to know that he'd managed to keep his secret so well after all, almost to the bitter end.

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, January 4th 2003, 6:07 p.m._

_"I'm not sure this is going to work,"_ KITT hedged.

"When has anything I've ever designed for you _not_ worked?"

_"Point taken. But a bipedal avatar?"_

Brad's hands flew over controls and interfaces constructed of virtual light in a pitch-black space, his own programmed representation shining with its own subliminal glow, casting a pale reflection on a simulation of a gleaming ebony floor. "KITT, we've been through this. You can't enter the VR in your pure state — you'd set off every alarm in the place, and besides, the jacked-in humans you encountered would either have their video feeds burned out by your power levels or wouldn't be able to see you at all. If you and Shawn are going to infiltrate it you'll need to blend in, and I'm sure as hell not sending you in there as a horse."

They were currently in the Cloister — a reference to British sci-fi TV that Brad was pretty sure nobody else on the Team appreciated — where, in a firewalled virtual reality environment, Brad had already spent many hours working on KITT's program: it was much easier to manipulate the code as "physical" elements, building and parsing and integrating them with his mind, than it was to input on a keyboard or to issue voice commands to a real world computer workstation. Russell Maddock had only approved the VR addition to the lab a week and a half ago after Brad had bombarded him with months of proposals, reports, and outright demands to upgrade the Team's working environment to twenty-first century standards, and KITT had taken to it like a fish to water, laying out parts of his own program like intricate mechanisms of living radiance for Brad to come to grips with in ways never before possible.

Now, as usual, his core personality hovered somewhere in the darkness beyond the "lit" work area, unseen but profoundly tangible. Brad, in the privacy of his own mind, sometimes recalled ancient legends of celestial Powers too glorious to be seen by mere human eyes, so that they kept themselves veiled lest the sight of them drive those they contacted to blindness — or to madness.

There was no burning bush here, only a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once: _"If I had the choice, I'd much rather go with four legs than with two."_

"Well, you don't." He glanced up from the interfaces in the general direction of the ceiling, which was as good a place to look as any when addressing KITT in this setting. "Come on, Big Guy, you usually leap at the chance for a new experience. What's got you so spooked about this one?"

_"You'd be apprehensive too,"_ KITT snapped, _"if you'd never worn arms and legs before — and were expected to display that lack of experience in public on the very first day you owned them!"_

Brad turned his full attention back to the controls, smiling thinly. "Relax, I've included heuristic adaptors that will tap into your existing archives: they'll analyze past memory traces of human body language, correlate them with your current emotional state, and produce appropriate responses."

_"Wonderful," _KITT retorted with a distinct lack of enthusiasm._ "And what if I end up walking and gesticulating like Russell Maddock?"_

He rolled his eyes at the thought. "Don't worry, I did some advance filter tailoring. Your kinesics will match your personality — well, as I perceive it, anyway."

This time there was grudging admiration in those dry tones. _"You think of everything, don't you?"_

"I try. So, are you ready to see your new look?"

_"I suppose so. But if you gave me thinning black hair, squinty eyes and a cheesy little moustache, the deal's off."_

He hadn't, not by a long shot, and he paused with his fingers over the initialization command, letting his smile warm to an expression of clear pride. "Meet the new you,"" he announced, then called up the avatar he'd spent so many hours crafting in the privacy of his home office.

A chair not unlike a dentist's examination couch materialized in the centre of the Cloister, highlighted by a spotlight, with a slim body arranged upon it as if composed in sleep — which, in a sense, it was, an empty shell as yet uninhabited. Brad kept his mouth shut, giving the AI time to process what he was seeing.

_"You made my avatar exactly the same height as your own," _KITT observed at last.

"And with the same general build. I used my own scans as a template — it saved time." Then, suddenly and unaccountably nervous: "I hope you don't mind."

_"Not in the least."_ Brad could feel him moving closer, like the weight of a thunderstorm on the horizon, to inspect and engage the new construct more directly. That was a good sign. _"Are the features modelled on anybody in particular?"_

"I sampled the country-western singer Keith Urban as the base, then narrowed and sculpted the contours."

_"One of Shawn's favourite performers."_

"I thought she'd appreciate it."

_"I'm sure she will."_ He was circling now, sending chills down Brad's virtual spine at his proximity. _"Why this particular color scheme?"_

"White skin for a white knight —" That provoked a faint sound, almost a chuckle. "— and black hair, because, well, black roof, right? After that, a black bodysuit with a red full-length coat over top just made thematic sense."

_"Its eyes are closed,"_ KITT prompted, and Brad issued a command that opened them, revealing circles of dark ruby with sclera and pupils of gleaming obsidian. _"Fascinating — and rather intimidating._" But he didn't sound displeased — quite the opposite, in fact.

"Under normal circumstances you'll be wearing black mirror shades, the better to —"

_"— mislead people concerning where my attention is at any given time?"_

He nodded. "Exactly. Also, those type of glasses convey a subliminal 'power' message, which I think you'll find quite useful where you're going."

_"So you anticipate that Shawn and I will be playing "good cop/bad cop" yet again?"_

"I'd practically guarantee it."

Another moment of silence, full of consideration. _"I'd like to try it on."_

It was a rare pleasantry on KITT's part — the avatar's gates were already wide open — and Brad risked a smile of open fondness, gesturing the AI toward the gift he'd so carefully crafted. "Be my guest."

The shift in focus was clear to be felt as the pull of gravity in the room transferred from the void to the avatar, infusing its pale skin and cladding of crimson and black with vital energy, firing the red in its eyes to electric life. For a count of three seconds KITT lay where he was, a subliminal shiver running down his body from neck to boots as he brought every pixel into harmony with his core consciousness; then he sat up and rose to his feet, scanning the room around him before looking down at himself, raising his white hands to watch the long fingers slowly flex, openly fascinated.

Brad could only stare, forgetting even to breathe. He'd written every line of this code with the total engagement of his tremendous intellect and the full force of his enduring love, but in his wildest imaginings he hadn't expected it to look like this, with the essence of KITT's personality already clearly imprinted on every curve and angle and highlight and shadow. The yearning to cross the virtual room and reach up to lay his hand on that sharply contoured cheek was so overpowering that he actually had to clench his fists and consciously set his feet more firmly on the floor, deliberately anchoring himself in place.

_"Incredible…"_ KITT's voice was soft, wondering, with a ripple of rare laughter that transmuted to sharper inquiry when he turned those ruby-in-obsidian eyes to Brad's avatar: _"How does it look?"_

For a couple of seconds Brad found himself literally unable to speak. "It's…"

KITT's avatar cocked its sleek head and scowled. _"Brad? Are you all —"_

He knew what KITT was going to say — that his pulse, respiration, and pupil dilation had all taken a sharp uptick — and smoothly moved to intercept. "I'm just dead amazed at how well the final result has turned out. KITT, you look absolutely perfect. It suits you right down to the ground."

A self-satisfied quirk of those thin lips made Brad's pulse race all over again. _"Yes… I can see that."_ He called up a three way mirror and turned to face it, openly admiring his slim silhouette, flipping back the gleaming scarlet coat to run those pale slender hands slowly over his neatly black-clad hips. _"As always, your design work is flawless in its elegance and its efficiency. I can feel that there isn't a line of code that's extraneous or out of place."_

"Fits you well, does it?" Oh God, was that a seductive murmur that had just crept into his voice?

KITT's voice fell to a harmonizing purr: _"Like a _**_glove_**_."_ And Brad was pretty damned sure that back in the Real a fine film of sweat had just broken out all over his body: he'd never felt further along the "gray" end of the gray-a continuum than at this particular moment, which was only bad news, but he couldn't help himself any more than he could help obeying the laws of gravity. _"The heuristic adaptors are also perfectly calibrated — it feels like I've worn this body for years rather than seconds."_He turned toward Brad again, his narrow smile slight but devastating in its effects, and opened his arms and inclined his head as he sketched an elegant little bow. _"But of course I should have expected no less from a programmer of your talents. Forgive me for doubting your abilities?"_

"You know I could never stay angry at you, KITT." Oh _God_, he was still — appalled, he banished the last trace of seductiveness from his own voice with a quick cough. "And you're welcome. Let's go see what Shawn thinks about it, shall we?"

_"With pleasure,"_ KITT responded, and he was still smiling in a way that made Brad's heart twist like a feather in the wind as Brad opened two uplink commands and transferred them into the VR proper, where Shawn should by now be waiting to meet KITT 2.0.

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, January 5th 2003, 4:38 p.m._

Less than twenty-four hours later, everything had gone straight to hell.

KITT's inhuman shriek at the agony of being transferred from the VR to the Cloister was still ringing in Brad's ears as he called up ranks of diagnostic displays, scanning them and instantly synthesizing their complex data into one horrible conclusion: the AI was in even worse shape than he'd initially estimated when he'd first scanned KITT after his precipitous fall from the heavens, down to 27% core coherence and deteriorating with every passing second. He risked a glance down at the examination couch where KITT's avatar had materialized, hardening his heart against sight of the burned and broken shell, the gaping wounds where the code Vivienne had hacked into his format had been forcibly ejected when KITT's ethical subroutines and primary memory archives had come back online.

_We've saved the VR,_ Brad thought with a sickening internal shudder, _but we've probably destroyed KITT in the process. _

He tried not to remember — he had so many other things to process right now — but he couldn't help it: the way KITT had blazed in the vault above the virtual city, glowing like a dark star in cataclysmic eclipse, laying waste to everything in his line of sight with ruthless efficiency. Towers and temples had shattered to dust and flame before the waves of his power, transmitted through the etheric substance of the VR itself — but Shawn had dared to approach him, to be caught in the lethal gravitational well of his reprogrammed obsession, and to ask only one thing of him before she died: a kiss.

Brad would never forget KITT's laughter, high and cold and mocking… but he had given her what she asked. And the curse had been broken, the healing code Brad had hastily engineered administered through avatar-to-avatar contact — and KITT's all-consuming flame had been extinguished in a crash from the heights of heaven to the depths of the ruins he had created, leaving him cold and fatally wounded —

But not alone. Brad had transferred himself instantly to the devastated AI's side in spite of the danger of an imminent explosive coherence failure, and was already performing diagnostics by the time Shawn swept down to join him. Dying, wracked with grief and guilt, KITT had whispered Shawn's name in a painfully broken voice and reached for her hand, and she'd taken it without hesitation. She was still holding it now even though he'd effectively lost consciousness, networking her own brain with his to an unprecedented degree, instinctively aiding him the only way she could.

Her gaze was locked onto his face, her lips moving silently. What was she saying, in the dedicated channel that only KITT could hear? Brad didn't have time to find out, his hands flying over the interface as he kept up a curt commentary: "System integrity is holding but his CPU is taching all over the place. I'm going to try reinstalling the lost core components —"

Shawn's virtual gaze rose to his face, her eyes flashing savagely. "If you do that it could kill him!"

"If I _don't_ do it, he'll die anyway. We've got to reestablish process coherency before he suffers an annihilation event." He'd finished calling up the thirteen core components that had either been removed by Vivienne or damaged when Shawn had injected the reconnect code, and he paused for one precious second, drawing a deep breath and offering up a quick prayer that he was capable of what he was about to attempt, so far beyond any programming feat he'd ever tried before. "Hold him, Shawn! Hold tight, and don't let him go."

She was looking at KITT again, clutching his unmoving hand in both of hers with a grip to defy death itself. "Never…" It was a vow as profound as any Brad had ever heard. He only hoped she could live up to it.

Time to abandon the avatar-based interface engagement protocols. He shifted his mental focus, wrapped his mind around the components and plunged directly into the AI's shattered matrix, simultaneously rewriting code in all affected areas, reworking the interfaces of the components themselves based on what he found and what he was able to create, and fitting them into place, constantly sculpting mathematics and arcane language on all fronts. Time had no meaning: only KITT's sustained screams, embodying a depth of anguish that a sound so alien should have been incapable of conveying, had any impact on Brad's awareness, but they effected his emotions rather than his intellectual cognition — and indeed, what greater motivator could he possibly have had to succeed than the love those cries spurred to such painful life? He moved, he felt, he thought as one in spite of the nearly incalculable range of variables he faced… and piece by piece the puzzle fell into place, the badly damaged matrix stabilizing increment by increment. KITT finally, mercifully, fell silent.

_So beautiful, and so strong: as fierce as fire, as enduring as steel itself._ The phrase became a mantra, a chant timed to the beating of his heart and a plea to the sea of light and shadows that engulfed him: _You've never failed me before… Dear God, don't fail me now!…_

After what felt like an eternity he crafted the final piece of code to lock the last component into place and staggered out the other side, into the arms of the biggest headache he'd experienced since having his chip implanted. It nearly blinded even his virtual sight, but he still managed to focus his attention on the diagnostics overhead. He'd been at work for forty-nine minutes and twenty-two seconds.

"Core coherence at 42.7%," he rasped, every word hitting his forebrain like a sledgehammer. "System integrity holding. All primary core components are back online."

"He's stable," Shawn whispered, and it was not a question: she was, after all, linked with KITT more deeply than Brad could ever hope to be, to a degree that he could not afford to fully appreciate at the moment. Looking down, he found her still entirely focussed on KITT with clear tracks of tears running down both her cheeks.

"For now." He wanted to crawl into a dark hole and sleep for a week. "But he's going to need a lot of work, starting immediately." He glanced further upward, toward the vidwindow that displayed a video feed to the Team lab. Anxious faces gazed back at him. "Dr. Alpert, cath me. I'm going to be in here… a while."

Shawn refused to leave the Cloister, even though there was little she could now do. She sat at KITT's side while Brad worked through wave after wave of exhaustion — twelve hours, sixteen, twenty-four — holding the avatar's hand and watching the tiny flickers of tension that flashed across his pale face as Brad carefully tested his core system networks, then started to re-integrate the peripheral systems into his perceptual matrix and perform the 1,437 "housekeeping" tasks necessary to prepare KITT for a clean cognitive restart.

He didn't have the heart to order her to leave, because he knew who KITT would want to see first when those brilliant eyes finally opened again.

* * *

_34-272 Solero Drive, Seattle, Washington, USA, January 6th 2003, 11:48 p.m._

Weary to the bone, he lay in his lonely bed and stared up at the shadows on his ceiling, unable to sleep for thinking about the kiss that had banished madness and brought KITT back to them again — and how it had not been, and never would be, his own.


	5. Chapter 5

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

Blackness was starting to eat up the edges of Brad's vision, even deeper than the starless midnight depths of KITT's eyes. He nodded as best he could to confirm his earlier statement, grimaced as his VR manifestation started to flicker and stall under the ravages of the code taking it apart, and rallied enough to reach up and lay a shaking hand to KITT's cheek for the first and last time.

"Since the day I met you, Big Guy…" He could hear his voice fading and strove to override the failure, forcing each word through the chill that was shrouding itself around his bones. He had three seconds left. He was determined to make them count.

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, January 10th 2003, 11:12 a.m._

KITT had a habit of fidgeting when Rudy had him up on the lift for maintenance. Little things, mostly: keying his side windows open and shut, popping and resealing his door locks, spinning his tires… Brad had tried to track down a root cause in his programming, more out of curiosity than any intention to eradicate the quirks, but had ended up coming to the conclusion that the AI simply got restless when he was deprived of the ability to move under his own power. Rudy didn't particularly mind as long as long as the wheels didn't start rotating when he was in direct contact with them, so Brad had seen no reason to take any further action.

Today, however, KITT had been off the ground for two hours — and hadn't twitched once. Shawn, who had been sticking close to the lab since KITT's catastrophic misadventure in the VR, had overseen every stage of Brad's program reconstruction even though she was incapable of understanding most of it, and now that Rudy was conducting the final go-over of KIFT's systems she was sitting in one of the ergonomic chairs with her left leg curled under her, watching the mechanic's every move over the cup of coffee she cradled in both hands, her blonde eyebrows contracted in a tight little frown as Rudy methodically worked his way along KITT's underside from prow to stern.

Brad had been keeping an eye on things too, although an outsider would have sworn that he was concentrating entirely on the overnight incidence reports scrolling down his screen array. KITT's lack of self-generated behaviour worried him, a lot. Anyone who didn't know the AI would have said that he'd responded promptly to all inquiries addressed to him during the past four days and that his answers had been both cogent and comprehensive — but Brad knew better, much better, than to mistake mere efficiency for wellness. When Shawn caught his eye and put down her coffee cup he nodded and put down his own as well, rising to follow her out of the lab without a word. KITT, atypically, made no comment upon their exit and no inquiry as to their destination.

When they got outside the Compound, across the south parking lot and into a small clump of trees where a few picnic tables were arranged and where no audio surveillance would pick up their conversation, Shawn paused and turned to face Brad, and stated: "You're worried about him too."

Brad nodded grimly. "To an unprecedented degree. I've never seen him this…"

"Withdrawn?"

He nodded again, then dipped his chin and looked down at the winter-bare grass, clasped his hands tensely behind his back, and sighed. "I wish I could say I was surprised. But after what happened in the VR…"

Shawn glanced away toward the Compound, as if worried that KITT could hear them, even here. Frankly Brad doubted that he was tapped into the Compound's surveillance systems anymore given his current apathetic state of mind, but didn't see much point in bringing that up. "I know we agreed that leaving his memory intact was the best course of action, but —"

"It was the _only_ course of action," Brad asserted without hesitation. "You know he wouldn't leave a gap like that alone: he'd poke and pry at it, and eventually he'd find out the truth one way or the other. I prefer to face this issue head-on instead of waiting for it to creep up on our flank."

"But he's —" The pain in her eyes was so clear that for an instant Brad, as much as he sympathized, felt an irrational rush of jealousy. The tender inflection of her whisper didn't help. "It's tearing him apart."

Firmly he put the unwanted emotion aside. "Shawn… he destroyed 21.4% of the VR's infrastructure and sent twelve people into comas. Two of them may never wake up again. How do you_ think_ he should feel about that?"

"But it wasn't his fault!" she protested savagely. "He was under that — that witch's control! She used him, like a knife or a gun — and who in their right mind would blame a bomb for going off when it's programmed to explode?"

"The bomb itself, clearly, if it survived the experience." He rubbed at a sudden pain in the centre of his forehead, wincing and wishing that he'd brought a bottle of analgesics out with him. "Shawn, we've told him that forty-eight times between the two of us, and believe me, there's nothing wrong with either his microphones or his audio processing modules."

She stepped closer, her blue eyes flashing up at him. "But did he _hear _us?" she insisted. "_Can_ he hear us?"

Looking down at her fierce protectiveness, he experienced a brief and uncharacteristic urge to pull her into his arms and just hold her, to make the pain go away somehow. He doubted the gesture would be well received. "That's a choice only he can make. I could try to rejig his cognition to lessen his sense of personal responsiblity, but it's not a move I'd recommend right now. He's still fragile enough that it would only lead to more issues down the line."

Shawn looked away again, and in the plaintive tilt of her eyebrows he saw her gentler aspect emerge, as fugitive as a deer. "I just… I don't want to see him suffer like this. He doesn't deserve it."

"No." He heard his own grief and regret clogging his voice, and coughed sharply to clear it. "No, he doesn't. But it's the only way he can go, being who he is — dedicated to preserving the rule of law, and self-centred enough that it really _is_ all about him." This version of Shawn was considerably less prickly, so he elected to reach out and lay his right hand on her left shoulder, and to smile at her when her gaze returned to his face. "Hey. He's going to be okay. He just needs time — and all the support we can give him. Getting back on the road is going to help tremendously, I guarantee it."

A smile bloomed on her face, and to his surprise she stepped in closer and wrapped both arms around him, hugging him tightly. "You're a good friend, Brad," she whispered against his shirt from somewhere around his sternum. "We're both so lucky to have you…"

Alarmed, he swallowed his uncertainty and ventured to put both arms around her shoulders in turn, giving her a light quick squeeze. The niceties of physical contact with other human beings — how intimate, how forceful, how long — had always been Greek to him to a large extent, lacking as he did the sensitivity of sexual awareness to guide him. She didn't seem inclined to let go, so he put both hands on her shoulders and gave one of them a quick pat that he hoped was reassuring.

"Don't worry, kiddo," he quipped, "he's as tough on the inside as he is on the outside. He'll come out of it eventually. We've just got to give him time."

When she looked up at him, still clinging tight, and smiled with open fondness he felt doubly awful about the truth that neither of them suspected — and neither of them ever would. But he smiled back reassuringly. KITT needed his driver in as positive a state of mind as possible, after all.

* * *

_The Knight Foundation Copellia Compound, Seattle, Washington, USA, January 17th 2003, 10:32 a.m._

A week later, both Shawn and KITT were in a completely different state of mind for reasons that nobody could have seen coming.

Brad hadn't seen either of them for four days, but he was fully aware of what had happened: an EMP surge at an industrial site during their first mission post-Vivienne had knocked out Shawn's RSI chip, taking with it her enhanced cognitive abilities — and, it seemed, all memories she'd stored since its installation almost three years ago. Physically she was in excellent condition, but mentally she'd been hurled back in time to a point just before she'd been shot in the head by Thomas Watts: as far as she was concerned, she was still a rookie cop with the SAPD, and from what Brad had heard the discovery that she was was both chipped and teamed up with the AI the chip had originally belonged to had come as quite a shock.

Dr. Alpert had recommended that Shawn be reintroduced to her "new" life slowly, in hopes that her RSI chip would reboot on its own and release the memories it had encoded gradually without necessitating a hard restart. She had therefore been at her apartment for the past four days, soaking in the environment and visiting the neighbourhood landmarks — and talking with KITT, who had been instructed to discuss their partnership in general terms and to answer any questions she might have in as much detail as she requested. Brad had no doubt he was doing exactly that, and very carefully given the possibility of inflicting psychological or neurological damage — and truly there was no cloud without a silver lining, because Brad strongly suspected that having to help his driver through this strange crisis of identity had effectively pulled KITT out of his own self-absorbed guilt over his actions while carrying out Vivienne's orders. He hadn't contacted the AI himself because he didn't want to distract KITT in any way from Shawn's care and maintenance: if KITT wanted advice or just a sympathetic ear, he knew where to find his senior programmer at any time of the day or night.

But there was no contact until a sunny Friday morning, and when it came, it wasn't with the person Brad had really been hoping to hear from. He'd been sitting at a picnic table in the same grove of trees, sipping a cup of chocolate coffee and just enjoying the unseasonably warm morning, when a soft hesitant voice spoke up from behind him: "It's Bradley, isn't it?"

At first he didn't recognize it, so different was the timbre from what he was used to hearing. But 0.23 of a second later it clicked, and he swivelled to turn a friendly smile on Shawn, who was standing ten feet away with a Foundation logo coffee mug cradled between her hands and a tentative smile of her own. "Yeah," he said warmly, "but my friends call me Brad — and you're definitely counted among their number. Hello, Shawn."

The smile widened cautiously. "I hope I'm not disturbing you — KITT told me I'd find you here."

"Not at all." He gestured toward the other side of the picnic table. "Join me?"

"Thanks." She came and sat, perching herself on the edge of the bench like a bird about to fly. Brad took in the details of her kinesic profile with great interest: he was used to the "KITTed" version of Shawn, with a core of steel and often prickly edges, whose gentleness was rare but profound. Without the influence of the RSI chip she reminded him of a wild doe, with softness to every contour and large dark eyes that studied him warily. He'd always been impressed by the force of her personality in spite of her lack of physical stature; now the personality was as just arresting, but it only emphasized the slightness of her build. He leaned away slightly, tacitly giving her more space, and took a sip of his coffee: _See? I drink with you. A friendly social contract is in place._

"So," he said with a casual inflection, "Dr. Alpert finally decided you could reintroduce yourself to the rest of the Team, did he?"

She shook her head fractionally. "Actually, it was KITT's idea — and he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer." Her smile widened, suddenly as bright as the winter sky, and she tilted her chin a little to her right in a way that was almost coy. "I get the feeling he's used to getting what he wants."

Brad couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, you have _no_ idea… and when it comes to you, he'd move heaven and earth if he had to. Where is he now? Thirty metres away, listening to every word we say?"

"He's in the lab where you and Rudy work. He said he and Rudy had 'some catching up to do', and practically shooed me out of the room."

"Hrm." He sipped his beverage ruefully. "Probably wanted to discuss the latest issue of _Advanced Robotics Theory and Practice_magazine." Then, in response to her skeptical expression: "I'm serious. KITT is state of the art, but he gets a real laugh out of the latest 'innovations' in the field."

Shawn was silent for a long moment, staring into the depths of her coffee cup. When she finally spoke her voice was low and wondering: "I still can't believe it's real. Part of me keeps waiting for a man with a microphone to jump out from behind a telephone pole and shout _April Fools! _But… he's really a talking car."

Brian nodded. "Yeah, he is." Then shook his head. "And no, he isn't. He's one of the top three most evolved artificial intelligences on the planet, installed in a multi-function robotic construct that just happens to look like an automobile. I'm pretty sure that Russell Maddock would have made the Knight Industries Four Thousand look like Optimus Prime if he'd thought he could get away with having a ten metre tall robot stomping through the streets of San Antonio — but cars blend in a whole helluva lot better, so there you go." He smirked over the rim of his cup. "Come to think of it, KITT probably would have enjoyed the general effect too… he loves being able to make a grand entrance."

Her smile was back, this time warm with fondness in a way that made Brad's heart do a slow flip in his chest as like recognized and resonated with like. "He's pretty amazing, isn't he?"

"Believe me," Brad said with feeling, "it only gets better the longer you know him."

"He's been so nice, and so patient with all my questions. I was surprised to see him light into Dr. Alpert like a mountain lion when he was arguing that I was ready to visit the Compound." A little laugh, and a slow sip of her own cup of coffee; when she set it down on the tabletop she curved her hands around it and looked away into the trees, her expression almost dreamy in a way that Brad recognized again, a way that went to his heart like the pang of a silver blade. "But… at the same time, I wasn't surprised at all. It was like I'd been waiting to see that side of him come out — like very moment I spend with him is…" Another shake of her head, this one self-deprecating. "It's hard to explain, but it's a little like coming home — after years of being away, and alone." She glanced back to Brad, one corner of her mouth still quirked upward, her blonde eyebrows drawn together in a little questioning frown. "Does that make any sense?"

Brad took another swallow of coffee against the tightness in his throat. "Yes. Yes, it does."

"We were very close, weren't we?"

This time he swallowed dry, and looked directly into her solemn blue eyes. "You loved each other. And I suspect you still do."

She looked down into her coffee again, laughing softly at herself: "I'm in love with a talking car?"

"Not a car — a person in a non-human body. One of the best and brightest people I've ever known." He loosened one hand from his cup and reached out to deliberately lay that hand on her forearm, drawing her gaze back to his face again. "That's what you came to me to hear, isn't it?" he asked gently. "That you're not crazy?"

Her eyes were haunted — but there was hope there, too. "What are we going to do if I can't remember?"

Brad smiled with cocky confidence. "Oh, you'll remember. Trust me: KITT is pretty much impossible to forget, no matter what the circumstances." He gave her forearm a squeeze, withdrew his hand, and rose to his feet. "Come on, let's get back to the lab — seeing him in action with all three of us at once might fill in some of those gaps in your long-term memory."

* * *

_The Here Kitty Kitty Club, Seattle, Washington, USA, January 30th 2003, 8:41 p.m._

"He's seeing someone else." Brad was past caring what Paulie thought. Thanks to the three beers he'd put away since arriving at the bar, one right after the other, he really didn't care about much of anything at all. "I found the proof this afternoon. He'd left it where I would see it… God, what a _bastard_…"

It was nine days after Shawn's memory had fully returned that Brad, reviewing KITT's activity logs for the past five days, first picked up the blank spots — not that they actually looked blank, oh no, the AI had carefully filled them in with material C&Pd and remixed from long-past archives… but to Brad the substitutions were clear to be seen, clear enough that he suspected KITT had intended that they be detected, at least by his senior programmer. Certainly Russell Maddock wouldn't have spotted them in a million years.

So Brad had dug deeper, and this afternoon he had turned up three things: VR uplink traces preceding sessions of two or three hours at a time during Shawn and KITT's "off" hours… hints of unspecified modifications to the matrix of KITT's VR avatar… and search fragments concerning the sexual behavioural programming of VR NPC characters, specifically NC-17 heterosexual male/heterosexual female interaction.

"Aw geez, mate," Paulie was saying sorrowfully; Brad was dimly aware of the weight of the older man's hand on his shoulder as they sat together at the bar. "That's harsh, that is. D'you want to talk about it?"

Brad shook his head numbly — but he wasn't numb enough, not by a long shot. It wasn't like he hadn't seen this coming, he wasn't blind, he'd known that both Shawn and KITT were keenly aware that in the space of three weeks they'd nearly lost each other twice, but somehow… somehow their decision to move to the next level had still hit him right between the eyes like a bullet. For the first time since the day he'd first contemplated what his life would be like as someone who was capable of loving but incapable of sustaining a sexual relationship, he was drowning in despair — because he'd lost out again, only this time it really mattered, because this time he was really in love and the person he'd have given his life for a chance to be with had chosen a heteronormative sexualized relationship.

A bitter mutter slipped past his lips: "He doesn't even _have_ a sex drive…"

Paulie scowled. "What the hell?"

Brad caught himself, laughed wildly, and gave his head a curt shake. "Never mind. 'S'th'alcohol talking. Doesn't matter." He turned away from his concerned friend — and say what you like about how annoying the man could be sometimes, Paulie was true blue — and took another long swallow of beer. No, not nearly numb enough — but he was getting there.

"It's over," he whispered, and closed his eyes miserably, knowing that in fact it had never truly begun — and that there'd never been the slightest chance for it in the first place. The worst part was knowing that in time he'd learn to accept it, as he'd learned to accept the rest of the situation — because even now, when the pain was so deep he wanted to die, he couldn't help but be happy for them, when they were so obviously happy together.

Paulie kept the beer flowing, and at the end of the evening he drove Brad home and hauled him up to his apartment and tucked him into bed. He even pretended not to hear Brad's strangled sobs as he turned out the lights and silently took his leave.


	6. Chapter 6

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

"… I'm sorry…" His voice was rapidly fading in his own ears and the world was constricting around him, his field of vision narrowing to the white mask of KITT's face, the face he had crafted with such care and love to be a fit vessel for the strongest, bravest, most paradoxically beautiful spirit he had ever known. The emotion in those sculpted features was rapidly phasing from horror to… what? He couldn't see anymore. He couldn't think.

So much he hadn't done. So much he hadn't said. If he'd dared — if he'd spoken —

"… so fucking sorry —"

It wouldn't have mattered — there had always been Shawn —

And now it was too late —

* * *

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:10 p.m. CST_

Thus far, this day had been one of the biggest clusterfucks Brad had ever had the profound displeasure to witness, much less actively participate in.

From the second he'd opened three uplinks and transferred himself, Shawn and KITT to the VR from the Cloister thirteen minutes minutes and eleven seconds previously, he'd been caught in a swirling vortex of running, shouting, fighting chaos: trying to keep up with the car and his driver's avatars and stay out of the worst of the combat while analyzing the streams of Shrike virus that filled the sky and flowed sinuously through the ruins of the VR's infrastructure, tracking those streams, and coding mirror shields against them on the fly. The three of them had a deceptively simple mandate — to get to one of the VR's Prime Nodes and implant an anti-Shrike propagation protocol, an assignment that was also being undertaken by sixteen other high-level teams from across the globe, including one that involved another Gestalt, the Italian AI known as Bella Sera. Under normal circumstances the Prime Nodes were well protected by firewalls, but Shrike had reportedly decimated those defences, which only left hordes of hijacked necrotized avatars, random electrical storms, and the shattered unstable geography of the VR itself to contend with.

Four of those teams had already disappeared from the mission network, all members crippled or killed by Shrike code incursions. And Brad had every expectation of seeing more get eliminated before this little adventure was done; in fact, he saw no reason to revise his initial estimate that only four teams would survive to reach their Prime Node targets. The statistical probability of the propagation protocol actually eradicating the VR's Shrike infection was impossible to accurately calculate, but if it had cracked 30% he would have been exceedingly surprised.

He was currently hunkered down behind a leaning section of wall while KITT and Shawn fended off another wave of murderous zombie avatars: mapping the local Shrike streams, charting the environmental instabilities that surrounded them in order to plot their next path of advance, and endlessly recalibrating the shields that deceived the Shrike code into believing that there were not, in fact, three uninfected avatars racing through the heart of the occupied territory — or trying to, since they seemed to get ambushed every ten virtual metres. Under normal circumstances KITT could have simply transferred them with a thought, or picked one of them up under each arm and soared into the sky, reshaping the VR's arbitrary reality with the power of his will — but the environment was so destabilized that Brad had advised against a power-bend of that magnitude, and besides, it would have been a huge red flag to the Shrike entity and would have brought much worse manifestations of its displeasure down upon their heads.

So here they were, stopped in their tracks again, and Brad was keeping a quarter of an eye on the high-speed blurs of Shawn and KITT tearing through the enemy avatars while trying not to outright destroy them and thus injure the innocent human beings still bound to them, and the rest of his attention on the high volume of mathematics and semiotics he had to process as quickly as possible. He was, therefore, not at all pleased when a _ping _in his left ear announced an incoming PM from one of the other teams — but he answered it anyway: "Make it quick!"

A tiny headshot of Doctor Camera, the program analyst from the Italian team, flashed into existence in the left-hand field of his virtual vision. _"Mister Adair! We —"_ A burst of static on the audio and video feeds before she came back, looking more agitated than ever. _"— Bella Sera!"_

His hands continued to dance across the virtual light-fields in front of him, coding like mad. "You dropped out there, Doctor. Say a—"

_"Bella Sera is gone!"_

"What?" He couldn't afford to pause, but he scowled mightily. "You mean, she's down? What —"

_"No!"_ Her dark eyes were full of distress. _"She is gone! An annihilation event! Shrike code of this configuration —"_ A stream of new data flowed into Brian's awareness. _"— came into contact with her, and destabilized her core matrix! She lasted four point three seconds after initial contact!"_

Scanning the data, Brian went cold all over: he was looking at the configuration of Death itself. "Oh, _Jesus…_"

_"You must keep this code away from KITT by any means necessary!"_

"Gee, you think so?" It was a preoccupied mutter under his breath, below the mic's programmed threshold. He memorized the viral profile and shunted the data aside to make room for new workflow, saying out loud: "Got it! Thanks, Doctor Camera. Anything else I should know?"

_"We are within two hundred virtual metres of Prime Node Six and will advise the network when implantation is complete."_

"Understood." She had just stated the obvious, but Brad knew from experience what a comfort following procedure could be in the face of a loss of that magnitude. "We're working on one hundred and forty metres here. Will advise upon implantation. Adair out."

_"Good luck,"_ Camera said, and left him to seventeen separate streams of data processing — and a new terror, coiled in his belly like a serpent waiting to strike.

* * *

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:13 p.m. CST_

They'd made it another twenty-two virtual metres and were going at a dead run, faster than any unchipped avatar could follow, when a sub-node under the street beneath them erupted in a burst of outrushing static, sending destabilizing waves through the essential substance of the VR and changing the geography on all sides — and tearing apart the equations of Brad's mirror shields like a wave of razors going through paper screens.

"Oh _hell!_" He skidded to a halt, executing a 360 flash-scan; Shawn and KITT kept going for another 0.47 seconds before stopping and turning, impatient, but knowing that Brad was their eyes and ears under these circumstances. "Shields are down! We've gotta find a —"

From within a broken building forty virtual metres up the road, behind Shawn and KITT's current line of sight, a stream of Shrike code reared up and turned its blind head towards them, seething with corrupting energy. It swayed for a fraction of a second almost too small to be measured — and then launched itself towards them, singing a strangely beautiful song of wind through innumerable rotted scales.

The fear that had lurked in Brad's core for the past three minutes surged up to clench his heart with the agony of recognition, a fist of unbreakable ice. Death had come, and neither he nor Shawn were its target. This viral incursion was programmed to seek out AI in preference to human signatures and there was no time to cast a protective shield, but maybe — if he acted fast enough, if he didn't waver —

KITT was still looking at him, stepping forward with a scowl, opening his mouth to speak.

_I'll never hear his voice again._

Brad leaped away from him toward the far edge of the road, crossing four metres in a stride — and establishing himself as an even more conspicuous and attractive target. He turned the full power of his overwhelming need on the AI-annihilating Shrike code, doing exactly what he'd ordered KITT not to do, bending this highly unstable reality with a roar of fierce defiance:

_"Take me, you bastards!"_

And because strong emotion could sometimes affect the very substance of the VR, especially when the wielder was a chipped programmer of exceptional skill and indomitable will, the Shrike wave swerved toward him — and struck, blasting him off his feet and seven metres down the broken road, his heart already stopped, his brain soon to follow.

Lying on the ground, he knew he was going to die. But seeing KITT leaning over him, picking him up, demanding to know why… he also knew that in the end, when it mattered, true love had finally conquered all.

* * *

_The VR, July 19__th__ 2003, 3:14 p.m. CST_

— and then time stopped forever —

* * *

_Northeast Baptist Hospital, August 3__rd__ 2003, 6:24 a.m. CST_

— or so he thought.

THE END

_[The Knight Rider 2000 AU series of which this is a part can be found here: /series/26086]_


End file.
